


the dark, it called you back

by larkscape



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Galaxy Garrison, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Season 7 Spoilers, anatomy of a dissolving relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 08:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15432666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkscape/pseuds/larkscape
Summary: The risk itself is part of the reward. It’s a thrill like none other to go up there and stare down the black vacuum, to know that it could kill you in the blink of an eye and to fly into it anyway.Adam gets it. He does. But...Shiro has loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.





	the dark, it called you back

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched the leaked season 7 premier because I have no self-control, and then [this 3eb song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ8wVKPUN_g) popped into my head in the shower to give me a lot of feelings and I yelled ‘motherfucker’ so loud I scared the dogs.
> 
> Dialogue pulled directly from canon.

 

Space isn’t safe. It’s a fact Adam has long been accustomed to. Earth’s sun sets in the west, black coffee will stain a Garrison uniform something fierce, space isn’t safe.

For the most part it’s easy to dismiss; the Garrison has protocols, extensive safety training, simulators and unmanned trial runs and high-tech solutions — and besides, the risk itself is part of the reward. It’s a thrill like none other to go up there and stare down the black vacuum, to know that it could kill you in the blink of an eye and to fly into it anyway. To speed through an asteroid field, to seek out the cleanest image of a newborn nebula, to scout for habitable planets. Of course it’s not safe. It’s the frontier lands.

Adam gets it. He does.

Nothing brings the fact home to him like Shiro, though. Both of them are daredevils — they wouldn’t have signed up at the Garrison if they weren’t — but there’s a whole galaxy’s worth of distance between taking calculated risks for the rush of discovery and wringing out every last drop of yourself in a self-destructive drive to be the first. Space is thrilling, yes, and awe-inspiring and beautiful and _everything._ To both of them. The yawning void, the endless glittering black. The wondrous unknown.

What is beautiful and wild, though, is also cruel and unforgiving. One tiny slip out there and you’re dead. No second chances, no ambulance or hospital or doctor or even atmosphere. No machines to keep your blood pumping for you while your heart struggles to contract.

Nothing.

Shiro isn’t fragile. Adam _knows_ Shiro isn’t fragile; he’s seen it demonstrated a thousand times across countless missions, sees it anew every day when Shiro wakes up to face the morning with that determined set to his jaw. He is one of the strongest people Adam’s ever met.

But that doesn’t erase Shiro’s vulnerabilities. It just papers over them.

The last scare is too close in memory. If Adam thinks about it in anything more than fleeting brushes, he can still feel the tight knot of fear in his chest, the one that tangled there the moment Iverson made eye contact and Adam could read the news in his face. _Shiro’s had another downturn. Re-entry stressed his body too much._

Adam will never forget the moment Sam Holt dragged Shiro’s unconscious form down that shuttle ramp.

“You don’t need to protect me,” Shiro says now, bitter, slumped on the couch. “This is something I need to do for myself.”

He loves Shiro too much to be able to watch that again. He can’t do it. He’s not strong enough. Maybe that makes him selfish, but it remains true. _(I love him too much,_ he thinks. And then: _He doesn’t love me enough.)_

“There’s nothing left for you to prove,” he says. “You’ve broken every record there is to break.”

When will it be enough?

Never. Much as he doesn’t want to think it, he knows it will never be enough for Shiro, who’s been held back and told no too many times in his life to ever be satisfied with stepping back, with _taking it easy._ Shiro doesn’t like easy.

If their positions were reversed, if Adam were the one jeopardizing his life on this mission, Shiro would be strong enough to let him take the risk. Even knowing how it could end out there. How it likely will end out there.

Shiro is strong.

Shiro is a lot of things Adam isn’t.

For all the years they’ve been friends, for all the years they’ve been together, Adam has known that Shiro’s heart belongs to the deep black between the stars. But seeing that pitted directly against Shiro’s love for him and finding himself _losing…_ That’s the part that really hurts. It’s too clear now; he’ll never have Shiro, not fully. There will always be a part of him held separate, longing for the distant reaches of the universe. Dreams which Shiro must pursue, or which, held in abeyance, will fester inside him just like the illness that makes the Kerberos mission such a risk in the first place.

And it’s not only about Shiro’s dreams, is it? Adam has dreams, too. He has _(had)_ dreams of making a life with this man, and here Shiro is, ready and willing to destroy himself in pursuit of the distant stars. Before, there’d been hints, but with this conversation it’s become abundantly, painfully obvious that Adam can’t compete.

All this time, he was only fooling himself. He should’ve known.

_You can’t have it both ways, Takashi._

God, Shiro’s going to hate him for this and Adam can’t even blame him. He feels the siren song of the stars, same as Shiro does. He hates himself a little, too, for what they’ve come to, that it has to end like this. The hurt is a ragged-edged thing, bleeding somewhere under his sternum.

Space is what brought them together and space is what’s driving them apart.

“I know I can’t stop you,” Adam says, “but I won’t go through this again. So if you decide to go, don’t expect me to be here when you get back.”

_I can’t watch you kill yourself._

Adam’s Garrison-issue bag, when he picks it up, is heavy with grief, and forlorn hope, and unspoken words, but he shoulders it and walks away.

Shiro just lets him go, and that says it all, doesn’t it?

 

A part of Shiro wants to chase after Adam, down the halls, catch him by the back of the coat and bring him back, fix this, _keep_ him—

—but he can’t.

He sits on the couch and stares at his own knees as Adam’s footsteps disappear. Something heartsick churns inside him, heavy like lead.

Adam wants him to play it safe. Adam wants him to stay with his feet planted in the earth, to ignore the singing in his blood that draws him inevitably upward. On some level, Shiro understands; the last mission, when he blacked out on atmosphere re-entry, when his body betrayed him at the most base level — that scared Adam deeply. Shiro’s never seen him so terrified as he was in that hospital room.

But to deny the call of the stars? To turn down the chance to go to Kerberos on the farthest manned spaceflight in history? There’s no way Shiro can do that. Not even for Adam. He doesn’t have many years left to get out there and he needs to touch the vacuum again.

This mission is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and Shiro _has_ to take it.

The lead weight in his stomach pins him to the couch. Adam is leaving. Adam is _leaving him._ He’d thought that maybe, once they’d— that they could get marr—

No. He can’t even think it, not now. Not with those footsteps echoing in his ears, not with the burning behind his eyes. There’s a lot that Shiro would give up for Adam, but this dream is one thing he can’t compromise on, and if Adam can’t understand, can’t support Shiro in his quest to touch the deepest parts of the night sky while he’s still got the chance, then the two of them are never going to work. They’ll never have a life together.

When forced to choose, Shiro will always choose the stars. No matter the cost.

 

The news comes back from Kerberos.

_All crew presumed dead. Pilot error._

Some small, bitter part of Adam feels vindicated. He hates it. He shoves it down, buries it under the black tide of loss and anguish and all the wistful, useless might-have-beens (and that's not his place anymore; it hasn't been his place to imagine for a long time), scrubs his face until his skin tingles and his eyes look almost clear. Then he puts on his glasses and his uniform and reports for duty.

_Takashi,_ he thinks, longing, and stops the thought before it can go anywhere else.

The Galaxy Garrison waits for no one.

 


End file.
